Gallery

Friday, November 7, 2014

Queen B - Shadowbox Mixed Media

Women who believe they should be treated like queens…they
are right. Then there are women who are thought of as the ultimate queen…a Queen
Bee. A term that could be taken negatively or positively. I like to think of it
in positive terms. I like to think of a Queen Bee as a woman who is empowered,
who is a leader, who has going on and does all backwards in high heels (kind of
like Ginger Rogers). Ok, ok high heels not required, I personally don’t like
them, but nonetheless, a Queen Bee simply kicks butt. I decided to make a mixed media shadow box art
honoring the Queen Bee.

Besides being passionate about arts and craft, period, I really
enjoy creating shadow box art. I like to
alter deep stretched canvas, and deep picture frames and make them into a
shadow box. So far I have not used a real shadow box. For the canvas I do more of a reverse canvas technique
to make it look like a shadow box. The front of the canvas becomes the backing
of the shadow box, and the back opening is wood frame that the canvas is stretched
over. I use that opening to hold the various artistic pieces and embellishments.

How it’s made

This is a reverse canvas. In this case I cut the backing
(originally the front of the canvas) and folded over and painted it with gold
metallic paint. I painted the box with Martha Stewart purple pearl paint. I stenciled
the "faded dot" design by Tim Holtz with textured paint. I decorated a woodchip board
with scrapbooking designer paper and used various embellishments and used as backing
for the box. I painted the chipboard purple, used glitter and stenciled a
honeycomb shapes using textured paint. I added Prima swirl bling and pearls
throughout the box. I made the “B” out
of clay and spray painted with glitter gold paint.

The crown is a pendant from the Landing Bead. The crown is a
semi-circle shape, which was perfect for this piece, since I am only displaying
the front. The pillow that the crown is sitting on made out clay and I painted
with purple and gold paint and glued gold trim around it. The little platform
that the pillow sits on is also made out clay. I wrapped a purple ribbon to give it
a regal look. I printed a picture of Queen Mary, just love the image, the vintage look, her pose.

On the outside of the box, I used various embellishments.
The flowers that are not made out of metal are from Prima, Recollections and
Spare Parts. The key is made out wood and painted gold. The clock, cameo, dress
form, fleur de lis is made out metal. The top of box is covered with lace and
used a pearl trim throughout the front of the box. The queen bee image located on the top right was printed from the internet on card stock paper. I glued a glass pebble over the image using Modge Podge Dimension Glue. I decorated lace around the glass. Hope you enjoy my Queen B piece.